decline it. The character of an ambitious judge is, in my opinion, very dangerous to public justice; and if I were a sole legislator, it should be enacted that every judge, as well as every bishop should remain for life in the place which he first accepted. This is not the language of a cynic, but of a man who loves his friends, his country, and mankind; who knows the short duration of human life, recol lects that he has lived four-and-forty years, and has learned to be contented. Of public affairs,” you will receive better intelligence, than I am able to give you. My private life is similar to thatwhich you remember: seven hours a day on an average are occupied by my duties as a magistrate, and one hour to the new Indian digest; for one hour in the evening, I read aloud to Lady Jones. We are now travelling to the sources of the Nile with Mr. Bruce, whose work is very interesting and important. The second volume of the Asiatic Transactions is printed, and the third ready for the press. I jabber Sanscrit every day with the pundits, and hope, before I leave India, to understand it as well as I do Latin. Among my letters I find one directed to you; I have unsealed it, and though it only shews that I was not inattentive to the note, with which you favoured me on the eve of your departure, yet I annex it, because it was yours, though brought back by my servant.

The latter part of it will raise melancholy ideas; but death, if we look at it firmly, is only a change of place every departure of a friend is a sort of

death;

death; and we are all continually dying and revi ving. We shall all meet; I hope to meet you again in India; but, wherever we meet, I expect to see you well and happy. None of your friends can wish for you health and happiness more ardently than, my dear Sir, &c.

Sir WILLIAM JONES to R. MORRIS, Esq.

Calcutta, Oct. 30, 1790.

When your letter arrived, I had begun my judicial campaign, and am so busy I can only answer it very shortly. Lady J. and myself are sincerely rejoiced, that you have so good an establishment in so fine a country. Need I say, that it would give me infinite delight to promote your views? As far as I can; I will promote them; but though I have a very extensive acquaintance, F neither have, nor can have, influence; I can only approve and recommend, and do my best to circulate your proposals. We are equally obliged to you for your your kind invitation, as if we had it in our power to accept it; but I fear we cannot leave Calcutta long enough to revisit your Indian Montpelier. As one of the Cymro-dorians, I am warmly interested in British antiquities and literature; but my honour is pledged for the completion of the new digest of Hindu laws, and I have not a moment to spare for any other study.

Sir WILLIAM JONES to Sir J. SINCLAIR,
Bart. Whitehall.

Chrishna-nagur, Oct. 15, 1791.

You may rely upon my best endeavours

to

to procure information concerning the Asiatic wool, or soft hair; and the animals that carry it. I had the pleasure of circulating your very interesting tracts at Calcutta, and of exhibiting the specimens of very beautiful wool with which you favoured me. My own time, however, is engaged from morning to night in discharging my public duties, and in arranging the new digest of Indian laws. I must therefore depend chiefly on others, in procuring the information you are desirous of obtaining. Mr. Bebb of the board of trade, and Colonel Kyd who superintends the Company's garden, have promised to assist me. The wool of these provinces is too coarse to be of use: but that of Kerman in Persia, which you know by the name of Carmanian wool, is reckoned exquisitely fine, and you might, I suppose, procure the sheep from Bombay. The shawl goats would live, I imagine, and breed, in England; but it is no less difficult to procure the females from Cashmir, than to procure mares from Arabia. When you see Mr. Richardson, do me the favour to give him my best thanks for the parcel, which he sent me by desire of the Highland Society.

Sir William Jones to George Harding, Esq.

MY DEAR SIR;

Chrishna-nagur, Oct. 16, 1791. If the warmth of hearts were measured by the frequency of letters, my heart must be thought the coldest in the world: but you, I am confident, will never apply so fallacious a thermo

meter.

meter.

In serious truth, I am, and must be, the worst of correspondents for the following reasons among a hundred; a strong glare and weak eyes, long tasks and short day-light, confinement in court six hours a day, and in my chambers three or four, not to mention casual interruptions and engagements. You spoke so lightly of your complaint, that I thought it must be transient, and should have been extremely grieved, if, in the very moment when I heard you had been seriously ill, I had not heard of your recovery.

Anna Maria has promised me to sail for Europe in January 1793, and I will follow her, when I can live as well in England on my private fortune as I can do here on half my salary.

I cannot but like your sonnets, yet wish you would abstain from politicks, which add very little to the graces of poetry.

Sir WILLIAM JONES to Sir JOSEPH BANKS. Chrishna-nagur, Oct. 18, 1791.

I thank you heartily for your kind letters, but perhaps I cannot express my thanks better than by answering them as exactly as I am able.

First, as to sending plants from India, I beg you to accept my excuses, and to make them to Sir George Young, for my apparent inattention to such commissions. In short, if you wish to transfer our Indian plants to the Western islands, the Company must direct Kyd and Roxburgh to send them, and their own captains to receive them, and

attend to them.

We

We are in sad want of a travelling botanist, with some share of my poor, friend Koenig's knowledge and zeal. A stationary botanist would fix on the indigo-fera, as the chief object of his care. Roxburgh will do much on the coast, if he can be relieved from his terrible head-aches, but here we have no assistance.

I have neither eyes nor time for a botanist, yet, with Lady Jones's assistance, I am continually advancing; and we have examined about 170 Lin næan genera. She brought home, a morning or two ago, the most lovely epidendrum that ever was seen, but the description of it would take up too much room in a letter; it grew on a lofty amra, but it is an air plant, and puts forth its fragrant enamelled blossoms in a pot without earth or water: none of the many species of Linnæus corresponds exactly with it.

You must not imagine

that, because I am, and shall be, saucy about the Linnæan language, that I have not the highest veneration for its great author; but I think his diction barbarous and pedantic, particularly in his Philosophia Botanica, which I have a right to criticize, having read it three times with equal attention and pleasure. Had Van Rheede exhibited the Sanscrit names with accuracy, we should not be puzzled with reading the Indian poems and medical tracts; but in all his twelve volumes, I have not found above ten or twelve names correctly expressed, either in Sanscrit or Arabic. I shall touch again on botany, but I proceed with your